Talk:Comprachicos

Comment
What categorization should we apply to this intriguing, but disturbingly bizar, topic? Crime seems obvious, but I suspect there's more to this topic from a historic/psychological/entertainment/.. view.

Perkeo, the Dwarf from Heidelberg
Victor Hugo mentioned in "The Man Who Laughs":

''Doctor Conquest, member of the Amen Street College, and judicial visitor of the chemists' shops of London, wrote a book in Latin on this pseudo-surgery, the processes of which he describes. If we are to believe Justus of Carrickfergus, the inventor of this branch of surgery was a monk named Avonmore--an Irish word signifying Great River. The dwarf of the Elector Palatine, Perkeo, whose effigy--or ghost--springs from a magical box in the cave of Heidelberg, was a remarkable specimen of this science, very varied in its applications. It fashioned beings the law of whose existence was hideously simple: it permitted them to suffer, and commanded them to amuse.''

Could this information about Perkeo's physical condition be confirmed anywhere else? Unfortunatelly I can't read German to research in loco. Stella.

Is this for real?
From the content of the article, it sounds more like legend.

All the marks of Victorian fablery
From what I have read of this topic, this has all of the basic marks of Victorian fablery - association with Gypsies and China are clear red flags, mostly because any idiot born in the 19th century who had a tall tale to tell would immediately ascribe it to one or both of the two, being classic exotic outsider groups. Add to the fact that the practice is aimed at children, and you've got a textbook baseless horror story.

I would understand if this article were treated as if its concept had the same factual legitimacy as, say, blood libel stories. And a treatment of comprachinos in legend and literature would be fine. But as it stands, the majority of this article concerns a legend, plain and simple, and treats it as fact.

I find the fact that this article was written, edited, and rewritten by no fewer than a dozen different people over the course of close to a full year to be mind-boggling. Even a passing knowledge of medicine or cultural history could tell you the anecdotes presented as fact are risibly impossible, and clearly fabricated anyway; that it's taken until June 1 for anyone to even question whether or not it is real is astounding.

Suggest someone with more of an interest in the topic rewrite it as a discussion of comprachicos in literary culture, instead of treating them as a historical fact.

This is still happening
I don't know why this page says it's a myth. It's very common even today for gypsies to mutilate children so they can be sent to beg for money on the street. This can be confirmed by the police in Slovakia and Romania where gypsies have been arrested for this


 * Ah, so obviously it's true. &#8756; Therefore | talk 02:58, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Can someone clear up that last paragraph?
I have no idea what's going on there--I'm guessing it's talking about Ayn Rand (since that was mentioned in the peer review), but I haven't read any of her writing so it just seems to have flown in out of nowhere. It could probably also benefit from a "The term in other works" header as well. --140.103.97.225 09:58, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

This is real
Disfiguring in child beggars happens for real. I saw myself a person with so twisted legs (soles of feet facing upwards) that the could no way grow natural. I'm not sure if this happened for a child, or when he was adult, actively or by preventing proper care. But it is not a myth.

Here is example of a link from China daily: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/chinagate/doc/2004-03/01/content_310589.htm And another: http://www.adb.org/media/Articles/2002/417_Disability_Poverty/

Sure it could have happened naturally, if you count malnutrition or some kind of childhood injury as natural. The previous revision of the article proposed a broad spectrum of events corraborated only by folklore. Upon examination of those articles, neither posits the existence of any groups that deliberately alter the growth or bone structure or what have you of youths, but rather discusses the problem of the disabled becoming homeless or dependent on begging (quite common in underdeveloped societies, including industrial Britain and the US). I would approve of a revision or reconstruction of the article in the event good, solid evidence could be provided for the practice happening, but until it is, the article is more factual and valuable in exploring it as folklore. ACK-47 01:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Both articles do mention explicitly deliberate disfigurement. You haven't read them carefully before responding.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:14, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The disfigurement sounds very much like a severe case of club foot. This is a genetic defect, "natural" if you will, and can only be corrected by multiple surgeries, preferably at an early age. It can be assumed a child born to poor parents would not have the funds to undergo such surgeries. Anonymous 01:33, 18 December 2007 (EST)

What would actually happen
What would actually happen if you kept a creature permanently encased so it couldn't grow in the natural way? Didn't any of the pit of despair lot ever try it out? --Sam Blanning(talk) 22:11, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction
The Man Who Laughs says that Victor Hugo coined the term in his novel The Man Who Laughs, but this article says the term is older. Some sources would be nice. —Ruakh TALK 23:01, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Some suggestions for a refocus
This article seems to focus on the ridiculous at the expense of the facts. If Victor Hugo is the main source for the conception, we should focus on what he says, and not exaggerate it. For instance, he says clearly that "the Comprachicos had nothing in common with the Gypsies." Also, the quote about China is irrelevant, since he is specifically not describing the Comprachicos at this point. If there are no objections, I will substitute this quote from the previous paragraph: "The Comprachicos worked on man as the Chinese work on trees. A sort of fantastic stunted thing left their hands; it was ridiculous and wonderful. They could touch up a little being with such skill that its father could not have recognized it. Sometimes they left the spine straight and remade the face. Children destined for tumblers had their joints dislocated in a masterly manner; thus gymnasts were made. Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from the child; they also took away his memory. At least, they took away all they could of it; the child had no consciousness of the mutilation to which he had been subjected. Of burnings by sulphur and incisions by the iron he remembered nothing. The Comprachicos deadened the little patient by means of a stupefying powder which was thought to be magical and which suppressed all pain." Again, if Hugo is the source for most of the legends surrounding this, and if we focus on that, we can provide sources for most of the statements tagged. –Sarregouset (talk) 13:09, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Fortean Times notes
"rabbits with five paws, horned rats, hares with hairy spurs, double-tailed snakes and calves with two heads. Then the idea struck him to use humans for his grotesque art, with dire consequences: "In 1854 at Troyes he tried to grow the wings of a swan on the back of a two-year old child, but he was tried and convicted to a prison sentence of five years for doing so.""

"the idea arose within him to mutilate himself and to grow a cockscomb on his forehead"

""Unless I am mistaken, this Femorus never existed outside the imagination of the reporters of l'Evenement".[ 3] If a hoax or canard, then what contemporary trend caused such an outré tale to be published? Was there some murky but genuine circumstance of which it was an echo?"

"Although Hans Gross has been for many years engaged in tracing to their sources the accounts occasionally seen in the newspapers of London, Paris, and Rome, of children stolen or purchased and then artificially deformed for the purpose of begging, he has found none of them authenticated by evidence. He gives it as his belief that some such newspaper account is the basis of this romance of Hugo's".

"Hugo had pointed to his sources in his book, and even in a conversation to a friend. Yet, when after much searching the crucial source was located, a 17th century German professor of Oriental languages at the Academy of Tübingen, nothing pertaining to the Comprachicos was found in his works. The report concluded that, although the Comprachicos may have been Hugo's fancy, there was plenty of evidence in various historical records to demonstrate that similar bands had existed, observing: "And so the history of an obsolete phase of human society gives evidence of the artificial production of teratological cases and that, too, before the days of experimental teratology"

"Another notable feature of newspapers following the publication of Hugo's literary romance was the inclusion of regular reports of a novel phenomenon -- that of the cripple factories, unholy laboratories where, it was said, children were maimed, mutilated and reconfigured into grotesque and monstrous forms. In 1872, newspapers in France and the United States told of an establishment in London, "an old house, situated in a secluded alley in Highgate""

"A French traveller in Spain commented in 1883: "Let's now stop for a moment and consider the abundance and variety of the cripples in Valencia, the thousands, cripples, blind, twisted, hunchbacked and the rest. There must be a cripple factory in Valencia""

Orchastrattor (talk) 03:25, 27 April 2024 (UTC)